Redirects from pages that don't exist.

[Caruso]

This is very weird.

I was recently hacked, and have now cleaned out all the spam that was causing redirects to porn sites. I'm now doing some re-working of my old site version, all of the pages of which were redirected to the new site. I have now removed all the redirects. As such, if you click on this link you will simply land on the page itself (original site):

http://www.hundredpercentgambling.com/slots.htm

A few days ago you would have been redirected here:

http://www.hundredpercentgambling.co....php?pid=Slots

Since I've now deleted the redirect, that first link does not redirect. All good.

But here's the thing. This page does actually exist on my server anymore - in a desperate attempt to prevent the redirect, I removed it completely. It no longer exists in cyberspace:

http://www.hundredpercentgambling.co...rol_system.htm

Click on the above link and you'll be redirected to the new page:

http://www.hundredpercentgambling.com/page.php?pid=A gambling control system

I repeat, that link (http://www.hundredpercentgambling.co...rol_system.htm) does not exist. If I do a Google fetch I get "page not found" - so the Google fetch bot isn't seeing the redirect. If I replace the page with the original code, the Google fetch bot displays the old site correctly - that old code does not contain the redirect code.

I actually had this issue with about 20 other pages till yesterday, when all but four seemed to magically forget the redirect. But there remain four pages which do not exist, yet the browser is still picking up a redirect request.

What is happening and how do I prevent it?

[universal4]

I went to the link /slotshtm and vied the page
I went to the page /page.php?pid=Slots and viewed the page
I went to the page /gambling_control_system.htm and viewed the page
I went to the page /page.php?pid=A gambling control system and viewed the page

None of the above pages are being redirected in htaccess

My guess is that you want the .htm pages redirecting to the /page.php?pid= pages so you will need to write a redirect in the htaccess to take of this.

Any page that "used" to exist on your server (or one you plan on removing), but no longer exists on your server should likely have a 301 redirect in htaccess. You could redirect to a page similar to what "was" there or to the home page.

That way, just on the outside chance a link exists to the removed page in a cache or other third party directory or search engine wannabe or even to an seo wannabe that scrapped, indexed and is republishing your pages in their database, the traffic or spider that sees the link to the removed page will be redirected to the page of YOUR CHOICE.

Looking at the structure of your pages, if you are moving to a wordpress, joomla or other CMS type of system you should set your pages up to be more seo friendly. In wordpress it is in /settings /permalinks in the left navigation.

If you decide to make your urls more seo friendly, the structure of the htaccess needs to reflect that when dealing with redirects. This also makes the use of a variable string in the htaccess files easier to figure out usually.

Rick
Universal4

[Caruso]

Thanks. It seems every time I make a thread here I have some kind of revelation 60 seconds later.

I decided to check on my smartphone. No redirect. Then checked on the PC but with Firefox rather than IE. No redirect. So my IE browser must be hijacked. I reinstalled it, to no avail.

For now I'll just work with Firefox.

[Caruso]

My guess is that you want the .htm pages redirecting to the /page.php?pid= pages so you will need to write a redirect in the htaccess to take of this.

The opposite, actually - I'm ditching the updated site (php pages) and returning to the old version. The new version obviously had more aesthetic appeal, but it was very glitchy and too hard work for me to get my head around.

[universal4]

I understand,

I also responded in another thread to your hijack issue.

Let us know if we can help.

Rick
Universal4